I was too nearly asleep to pay much attention to this, but in a drowsy way I felt glad that my stock of quinine had removed the mate's objections to me as a passenger; and I concluded that my purchase of such an absurd lot of it--after getting worked up by my reading about the West Coast fevers--had turned out to be a good thing for me in the long-run.

After that the talk went on in the cabin for a good while, but in such low tones that even had I been wide awake I could not have followed it. But I kept dozing off, catching only a word or two now and then; and the only whole sentence I heard was in the mate's rumble again: "Well, if we can't square things, there's always room for one more in the sea."

It all was very dream-like--and fitted into a dream that came later, in the light sleep of early morning, I suppose, in which the mate wore the uniform of a street-car conductor, and I was giving him doses of quinine, and he was asking the passengers in a car full of salt-water to move up and make room for me, and was telling them and me that in a sea-car there always was room for one more.

IV

CAPTAIN LUKE MAKES ME AN OFFER

During the next fortnight or so my life on board the brig was as pleasant as it well could be. On the first day out we got a slant of wind that held by us until it had carried us fairly into the northeast trades--and then away we went on our course, with everything set and drawing steady, and nothing much to do but man the wheel and eat three square meals a day.

And so everybody was in a good humor, from the captain down. Even the mate rumbled what he meant to be a civil word to me now and then; and Bowers and I--being nearly of an age, and each of us with his foot on the first round of the ladder--struck up a friendship that kept us talking away together by the hour at a time: and very frankly, except that he was shy of saying anything about the brig and her doings, and whenever I tried to draw him on that course got flurried a little and held off. But in all other matters he was open; and especially delighted in running on about ships and seafaring--for the man was a born sailor and loved his profession with all his heart.

It was in one of these talks with Bowers that I got my first knowledge of the Sargasso Sea--about which I shortly was to know a great deal more than he did: that old sea-wonder which puzzled and scared Columbus when he coasted it on his way to discover America; and which continued to puzzle all mariners until modern nautical science revealed its cause--yet still left it a good deal of a mystery--almost in our own times.